Temples: Purification of the Temple

Through it all, through it all My eyes are on you

Through it all, through it all It is well

Through it all, through it all My eyes are on you

And it is well with me

Heavenly Father, thank You so much

for the opportunity to gather once again

to just do simple things.

Lord, there is nothing extraordinary

about singing, about praying,

about receiving communion.

Lord, it is very easy for each of us to do that.

Lord, we are so thankful that we get to serve a God

who calls us not to do impossible things

but calls us to do very simple things.

And Lord, every person in this room, I pray that You would help us

to have our eyes open this morning and to realize that

You have called us to do things that are very simple

and then You will do the extraordinary.

God, You have not caused us to cleanse ourselves

or to make ourselves better.

Lord, You have called us to surrender

and You will do the work.

God, You haven't called us to conquer a city or a nation,

but Lord, if we surrender to You and You live within us,

Lord, You can do the impossible.

So Father, this morning as we gather,

I just pray that You would remind us today

that it's not about goals or what we can accomplish

or trying to overcome this thing before we truly give ourselves to You,

but Lord, we have to choose to surrender.

And I pray this morning that You would remind us of that,

that You simply call us to surrender to You

and let You do the work,

and You give us the power and the strength

to do all the things You've called us to do.

That there's no results we're supposed to be producing,

but Your Holy Spirit within us produces the fruit that we need.

And so, God, this morning I pray that You would remind us

that it is simply about surrendering to You.

And Lord, as we gather,

we pray for so many brothers and sisters who aren't able to be here.

We pray for ongoing health issues, for spiritual issues.

Lord, we thank You for the young couples who are getting married

and who are traveling on honeymoons.

And Lord, we just thank You for that.

We just pray that You bless them this week.

Lord, we just ask that You would work

and move among us in this moment.

And Lord, whether we understand it or not,

or even if we're unsure about this moment,

that God, we would simply say,

okay, Lord, I'm here and I don't get it

and I don't know exactly what You want from me.

But God, I'm willing to try.

I'm willing to give it to You.

And so, Lord, help us to simply surrender to You today.

Father, we love You.

We thank You for this time together,

and we ask all this in Jesus' name,

all God's people said.

Amen.

You may be seated.

We began talking about how we're temples of the Holy Spirit.

And we talked about how it's God's personal plan

for each of us to become a temple of that spirit

and to become a dwelling place for the Holy Spirit.

And today, we're going to talk about how we need to be purified

and set apart kind of for that to happen.

Now, one of the great theological debates

that you see among people is,

is like, at what point does the Holy Spirit come in?

How do you become filled with the Holy Spirit?

What can you do to speed that process along?

And there's been several things discussed

throughout the church history

and all that stuff for that to happen.

And what you find is, in Scripture,

is when people are saved as you read throughout Scripture.

There's many different instances.

Sometimes it's immediate.

Sometimes there's time.

There's an instance where someone doesn't even know

the Holy Spirit exists,

and so the apostles pray for them

and they receive the Holy Spirit in that moment.

But there are some things

that we can look through as a church

and understand throughout the whole process

from Genesis to Revelation

that God's Word specifically leads us

to these moments of understanding

there's a desire for God's Spirit

to dwell with us,

to dwell in us,

and to dwell among us.

And that's really important as a Christian

to understand that calling on the name of Jesus Christ,

receiving salvation, receiving forgiveness of sin

is not the end game.

That's only the beginning.

That is the beginning process

of inviting God into your heart,

and then the most powerful of that process

is inviting the Spirit of God

to come in and dwell within us

to produce all the things that God calls us to do.

One of the most frustrating things

about being a Christian,

getting saved and giving your life to Christ is,

is understanding that when you give your heart to Christ,

now there's like all these things

that you're supposed to do as a Christian

and it can be overwhelming.

I don't know if any of you ever felt like that.

When I got saved, I didn't know the Word.

I didn't know the Bible.

So then you have to read this gigantic book,

and I didn't even read, didn't enjoy reading.

So you have to read God's Word

and you got to know God's Word.

And then there are all these Old Testament laws

that you kind of live by some of them

and you kind of don't.

And then there's all these New Testament things

that Jesus teaches and the Gospels and the Epistles

and all this stuff.

And then there's theology.

You got all these really smart Christians

who disagree over all this different stuff.

It's like, what should I believe?

And the truth is, is a lot of that stuff

is not something that you necessarily need to be pursuing

in your own strength.

Because if you pursue it in your own strength

and you're just trying to learn, you're trying to do this,

chances are you're going to be exhausted.

You're going to be tired and you're going to be frustrated.

But the truth is, is that if we're filled with the Holy Spirit

and the Holy Spirit speaks to us

and He guides us and He reveals things to us

as we read His Word rather than just trying to memorize His Word

but God reveals stuff to our words,

that's empowering.

That's life-giving.

When God teaches us and shows us

and helps us in moments of our life, that's empowering.

And so when the Holy Spirit comes in,

it says the Holy Spirit will produce these kinds of fruit in our life.

It's the Holy Spirit's job to produce fruit within us

to give you the desire, the strength, everything that you need

to follow God and serve Him the way that He's called you to.

We are incapable of doing that.

And today, we're going to read 2 Corinthians again,

chapter 6 verses 14 through 18.

And then we're going to talk about some things that we see

all throughout Scripture that can help us get to the point

where we surrender and invite the Holy Spirit into our lives.

So read this with me.

As Paul writes through the church in Corinth,

he says again,

Don't team up with those who are unbelievers.

How can righteousness be a partner with wickedness?

How can light live with darkness?

What harmony can there be between Christ and the devil?

How can a believer be a partner with an unbeliever?

And what union can there be between God's temple and idols?

For we are the temple of the living God.

As God said, I will live in them and walk among them.

I will be their God and they will be my people.

Therefore, come out from among unbelievers

and separate yourselves from them, says the Lord.

Don't touch their filthy things and I will welcome you.

And I will be your father and you will be my sons and daughters,

says the Lord Almighty.

And from this passage of Scripture,

one of the things that we can see clearly,

and point number one is,

is that there are things that have to be removed for God's presence.

You can see this from Genesis in the beginning,

all the way through Revelation.

There's all these things in our lives

that exist within us in our hearts, in our mind,

just like in our physical realm within our home and our family

and all the space that we occupy.

There's all kinds of things in our life.

And a lot of times, basically every time you see someone

that God is saying, come and follow me,

there is something in their life that has to be cut out

and removed so that God's spirit can come in

and have room to dwell.

When you look at Noah,

Noah would not have had life beyond the flood

if he had not been willing to by faith believe

that there was a flood coming, like God said,

and spent probably over 100 years of his life

building an ark to prepare for it.

Noah carved out a significant portion of his life in faith

to believe that what God said was going to happen was going to happen.

Now, I don't know about you guys,

but whenever you sit around and you talk to teenagers

and you start talking about college and you're saying,

hey, go to college, you're like four years of school,

it's a really long time, right?

Four years sounds like an eternity.

Then when you get to be my age, you're like,

dude, four years is like nothing.

But when you're young, it sounds like an eternity.

And then you start saying, hey, go to law school,

go be a doctor, you're like, dude, eight years of school?

Yeah, right, that's an eternity.

It sounds like forever.

And so for us as people to think like devoting a decade of our life

to something, to just saying that we're just going to believe

that God's going to do something.

I'm going to spend 10 years of my life

doing this one thing in belief that God's going to do something,

and if we don't do that, we totally miss it.

Noah did that for probably over 100 years.

When you look at Abraham,

Abraham could not enter into this relationship with God

and the promise of a land flowing with milk and honey

until he was willing and ready to leave the home upon which he came from.

He had to cut that out of his life in order to go

where God was leading him to go.

And then you start talking about the covenant

upon which God entered in with Abraham,

but he couldn't do that until he was willing to be circumcised.

And as weird as that sounds this morning,

for Abraham to enter into that covenant with God,

something that was in excess to be cut away

in order to enter into a relationship with God.

And you see that theme and that analogy

carry throughout the entire Bible.

Moses, when he stands before God in the wilderness

and God begins to speak to him in a burning bush and says,

Moses, take off your shoes

for the ground upon which you are standing is holy.

There's always something. It could be something huge.

It could be something simple.

It could be leaving your home.

It could be taking off your shoes.

It could be cutting away an excess part of your flesh

in order to move in.

But for God to come in and dwell with you,

something has to be removed.

Ruth could not have been the great-grandmother of King David

and a relative of Jesus Christ

if she had not been willing to leave her homeland

and go with her mother-in-law, Naomi.

Mary would not have been the mother of Jesus

and favored above all women

if she had not been willing to sacrifice her reputation

and potentially even her marriage

to be obedient to what God was calling her to do.

And Jesus himself would not have been qualified

to be the name upon which every knee shall bow

and every tongue would confess

if he was not willing to take his body

and put it to death and lay it down for his sheep.

He died so that we could have life,

like Pastor Timmy said a while ago

when we were doing communion to remember that moment.

Everything about following God requires us

in some way, shape, or form to take something in excess

that doesn't belong there

and remove it so that we can make room for God.

Now, in our lives,

a lot of times that can be sinful.

It could be something that's questionable,

like it could be one of those debatable things,

like, well, some people don't agree with this

and some people think that this is bad

and some people say it's okay.

It could be one of those.

It could be something that's very simple

and agree that there's absolutely nothing wrong with it.

But for you personally,

that is the one thing in your life

that's keeping you from being the man or woman of God

that he's called you to be.

And he says, look, you need to cut that out of your life.

Not because it's bad,

but because I have something better for you.

God's Spirit demands the room that he needs

in order to operate and work within our lives.

And whether you like it or not,

you and I are finite beings.

We do not have eternal room within us.

In our minds, in our hearts, in our bodies,

in our lives, in our schedules,

it is so limited.

And there has to be things that are cut out

in order to make room for God.

And that's one of the first things

that you see in Scripture is,

is that if we want the presence of God to be among us,

there usually has to be things that are cut out

in order to make room for the Lord.

Hebrews 12 verse 1 says,

Hebrews 12:1

Therefore, since we are surrounded

by such a huge crowd of witnesses

to the life of faith,

let us strip off every weight that slows us down,

especially the sin that so easily trips us up,

and let us run with endurance the race

that God has set before us.

Let us strip off every weight, especially the sin.

You guys know, in biblical times,

whenever they were still kind of competing

in like the original Olympic style of games and stuff

and all that was going on,

you know whenever they ran a race,

there was no athletic equipment like we have today.

There's no under armor.

There's no spandex.

There's no compression shorts.

There's no jock straps.

It's like baggy loose clothing,

and whenever you go out and run,

if you've ever tried,

most of you women know this,

I hope none of you men do,

but if you tried to run in a dress,

it's probably pretty difficult.

And so as these men competed,

they were so committed to the glories

of what came with winning a simple race

of running against other men

that they would literally run naked.

They would take off every piece of clothing that they had

because none of the clothing that they wore

was conducive to a competition like that.

And so they would run naked.

And so as the author is writing this in Hebrews,

he's like, hey, let us strip off everything

that slows us down, especially sin.

Like, there are some things that you have on

that's like, you know, it's like this morning,

you probably put on some clothes that's like,

it's not super comfortable, especially shoes.

You're like, it's not super comfortable,

but they look good, so I'm going to wear them.

Now, there's some things that we have in our life.

We know it's not good, but we like it.

It's there, and we know it slows us down,

but for whatever reason, we're going to hang on to that,

and we're willing to endure pain and discomfort

in order to have it.

And then there are other things you wear,

and it's like super comfortable,

and it looks pretty good,

and we really like that outfit,

and we're going to keep that one around.

We have got to get to a point in our spiritual lives

where we are willing to say,

God, I know that you have created me

so that your spirit can dwell within me,

and I can't force that.

I can't force you to come and live in me,

but all I can do is make myself available to you.

And until we get to the point where it's like,

God, if there's sin in my life,

if there's something that's like borderline inappropriate

and you could like debate upon different people

in our society whether or not it should be there,

and then, Lord, even if there's something in my life

that is inevitably good within reason,

but it's taking my focus and my attention

and my time and my life away from you,

God, help me to get rid of these things

so that I can make room for you in my life,

that I can make room for you in my heart,

because God's desire and God's plan has always been

for you to house his spirit within you.

From the moment you were created,

his goal and purpose for your life

was for his spirit to dwell inside you and inside me.

And until that happens, we will be left wanting

for the duration of our life.

We will never be complete.

We will never be satisfied.

We will never feel at peace in our relationship with the Lord.

We will always be found wanting

because we were meant to be a temple of the Holy Spirit.

Point two, the tabernacle had to be consecrated.

The tabernacle is the original idea of the temple,

but the tabernacle was portable.

It was the tent that they carried through the wilderness.

Then you see the tabernacle is this permanent structure,

and so we'll talk a little bit about those back and forth,

but the tabernacle had to be consecrated.

You know, it wasn't enough for the people of Israel

to just come out and just, like,

throw up this grand, beautiful, amazing, expensive building.

Like, when God gives them the requirements of this building,

it was an estimated over $200 million just in materials.

Gold, silver, bronze, the different types of wood

and the gemstones alone, over $200 million,

not counting the labor upon which,

the incalculable labor that was included,

upon which probably couldn't be duplicated today.

Because in that process, God gave the craftsmen special gifts

in order to complete the task that he called them to.

We probably wouldn't even be able to duplicate

what God was able to do with these people during this time.

But it wasn't just enough for them to build this fancy building

and for God's Spirit to come and dwell within it,

but know something else had to happen

as that amazing structure was built by these very gifted men.

And in Exodus 40 verses 9 through 16,

Exodus 40:9–16

God gives Moses these further instructions.

He's like, okay, you've built everything to my requirements.

All the people have brought gold, silver, bronze,

all this stuff worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

They've all brought it.

We have this tent, we have this structure,

and now we got to do this thing called consecrating it

so that it will qualify it for me to come and dwell within it.

And in verse 9 of chapter 40 in Exodus, he says,

take the anointing oil and anoint the tabernacle

and all its furnishings to consecrate them and make them holy.

Anoint the altar of burnt offering and its utensils

to consecrate them.

Then the altar will become absolutely holy.

Next, anoint the wash basin and its stand to consecrate them.

In verse 12 he says, present Aaron and his sons

at the entrance of the tabernacle and wash them with water.

Because here's the thing, we're dirtier than the stuff is.

You notice that?

All the stuff gets anointed,

but the people have to be washed and then anointed.

So we need even more.

So he washes them.

In verse 13 it says,

dress Aaron with the sacred garments and anoint him,

consecrating him to serve me as a priest.

Then present his sons and dress them in their tunics.

Anoint them as you did their fathers,

so they may also serve me as priests.

With their anointing, Aaron's descendants are set apart

for the priesthood forever, from generation to generation.

And Moses proceeded to do everything

just as the Lord had commanded him.

Guys, when you look at this whole idea

of like God has called us to be temples

and we're created so the Holy Spirit would dwell within us,

when you look at everything that God did

to usher in this relationship

and his presence with the people all throughout Scripture,

there's this understanding of a time

where we need to be consecrated.

There has to be a moment in your life

where you say, okay, God,

like I'm going to be this temple that you've called me to be.

This is what I want to be.

But you have to be consecrated and set apart.

You have to be made holy.

You have to be purified.

You have to be washed clean.

That has to happen in order for God's Spirit

to come and dwell within you.

You know, it's not just enough for somebody

to just build a church.

There are millions of churches around the world

that are meeting right now,

and sadly there are a lot of churches

where the Spirit of God has not dwelled for a long time.

And it's not because he doesn't want to be there.

It's because he's not been invited to be there.

It hasn't been a time of surrender

and cleansing in order for him to be there.

And for each of us in our own individual lives,

there has to be a time where we allow God to come in

and cleanse us.

Salvation is the initiation of that process.

Jesus, come into my heart.

Forgive me of my sins.

Cleanse me and make me whole.

That's the beginning.

That's the beginning of the process of being cleaned

and prepared so that the Spirit of God

can come and dwell within you.

If you're sitting here this morning

and you've accepted Jesus into your heart

and you're frustrated and you don't feel close to God

and you don't feel like you're living the way that you should

and you don't feel the power of God in your life

and you just feel like Christianity has kind of been

a frustrating experience for you,

the problem is is like you just started it

and then nothing else has happened since then.

Because salvation is the initiation of the process

of you being consecrated for the Spirit of God

to come and live within you and to live within me

and to live within all of us.

And it doesn't just stop there in this process

of proceeding forward,

but sometimes we have to be cleansed

even after we've entered into this process.

So point three, the temple had to be purified and cleansed.

It was a regular thing that they had to go through

and make offerings to purify the altars

and make everything ready for the temple

to function in the way that God intended that to be.

The temple had to be repaired.

There's lots of passages in the Old Testament

where the temple had been neglected,

it began to fall apart.

It's just a structure.

We're physical beings.

We fall apart.

We're exposed to a sinful world,

the elements of this world constantly

and we have to be purified and cleansed.

In Leviticus 16 verses 15 through 16,

Leviticus 16:15–16

God gave Moses these instructions.

It says,

Then Aaron must slaughter the first goat

as a sin offering for the people

and carry its blood behind the inner curtain.

There he will sprinkle the goat's blood

over the atonement cover and in front of it

just as he did with the bull's blood.

Through this process,

he will purify the most holy place

and he will do the same for the entire tabernacle

because of the filing sin

and rebellion of the Israelites.

The sin and rebellion in this world

and in our lives,

it has an effect on us.

And when you begin to look back through the Old Testament,

yes, God's presence dwelt in the tabernacle.

His presence was with the people of Israel,

but there was this constant need of being cleansed,

this constant need of being purified

so that God's presence would remain within them.

And so in Hebrews 9 verses 13 through 14,

Hebrews 9:13–14

it talks about Christ's perfect sacrifice.

And the author of Hebrews says,

Under the old system,

the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer

could cleanse people's bodies from ceremonial purity.

Just think how much more the blood of Christ

will purify our consciences from sinful deeds

so that we can worship the living God.

For by the power of the eternal spirit,

Christ offered himself to God

as a perfect sacrifice for our sins.

You and I had this wonderful privilege

of living in a time

where the sacrifice of Jesus Christ covers us

in such a way that we don't have to go to a temple

and kill all these animals and sprinkle all this blood

and rely on this priest to do all these things for us

to make us worthy of coming to worship God

and experiencing God's presence.

Jesus Christ's blood was enough for once in all time.

He is enough.

And partaking in communion today like that act right there

is just to remind us of what he did

and the simple fact that it's enough.

One time was all it took.

That's an amazing, powerful thing.

And we shouldn't take that for granted

in such a way that we just forget about it

but to remind ourselves of that

that as we fellowship with God

that we do have forgiveness of sin

ready available to us at any moment and any time.

That if you're sitting here this morning

and you have sin in your life

it's because you choose to have it

not because Jesus is not enough to take it away.

You choose to keep it and cling to the guilt and the shame

rather than releasing it to the only God

and the only one who can remove it from your life.

It's been done.

And as you continue to talk about this idea

of the temple and the tabernacle

in Mark 11 verses 15 through 17

Mark 11:15–17

one of my favorite passages, man.

Jesus just kind of goes savage.

You don't see this a whole lot

but every once in a while Jesus pulls out a different card.

In verse 15 it says when they arrived back in Jerusalem

Jesus entered the temple and began to drive out the people

buying and selling animals for sacrifice.

He knocked over the tables of the money changers

and the chairs of those who were selling doves

and he stopped everyone from using the temple as a marketplace.

He said to them the scriptures declared

my temple will be called a house of prayer for all nations

but you have turned it into a den of thieves.

And thinking about that process and that moment

is just the simple idea that everything that the Israelites were doing

and the religious leaders were doing

was perfectly acceptable to them.

They had been doing this for years.

It wasn't like they just started this the day before.

This had been a system that they had been using

for years before Jesus comes in

and he clears this mess out.

The people of Israel didn't know any better.

Actually it was probably a form of convenience.

They could come in, they could change their money,

use different monetary systems,

they could come in and buy what they needed for the sacrifices.

A very easy process.

But Jesus and God was not pleased with that process.

And the religious leaders and the people thought it was normal.

And so the idea that we sit here this morning

and think that every single thing that we do

is perfectly acceptable and pleasing to God,

it's kind of crazy that we would think that.

There could be something in our life right now that we're doing

that's perfectly acceptable to everyone else in the world,

but God is not pleased with it.

And if our hearts don't say,

God come in and cleanse me,

Lord I give you permission to come into this temple

and you turn those tables over and you cleanse it

and you do what you need to do with it

because you know better than I do because this is your house,

it's not mine.

That's the attitude that we have to have.

In point four, last one,

our bodies and souls need to be sanctified.

Give you your $10 word for today,

you can go home and look that up.

We have to be sanctified, set apart,

made holy for God to come in and dwell.

You ever heard the old term, not my circus, not my monkey?

You know, it's like it's really awesome to see somebody

who like you can see it's like, that's a problem.

Somebody needs to do something about that,

but you can walk away from it and say,

not my circus, not my monkey and you can leave it, right?

The Lord is not going to come into your circus

and clean it up until you invite him in.

You know, one thing about our house is,

is that it constantly gets dirty.

No matter how much we clean it,

no matter how often we try, it gets dirty again.

And with three kids, it gets dirty almost immediately

after we clean it.

It's really kind of never cleaned.

You just keep cleaning it forever.

And our lives and our hearts are no different than that.

Like we live in a simple, we're saturated by sin.

Everything that's on TV, everything on the radio,

everything that we see in society,

every advertisement, every billboard, everything that you see,

we're engulfed in sin every single day.

And no matter how clean we try to be,

no matter how pure we try to be,

no matter how much we try to devote our lives to the Lord,

we are constantly being affected by the sinful dirtiness

of the world that we live in.

And we need Jesus to clean us up constantly.

We need him to come in and to take over

and to make it his house.

And when it becomes his house, he will come in and clean it.

Guys, I'm going to tell you, you can't clean it.

There's nothing you can do to clean up your life,

your mind, your heart, whatever it is,

you can't clean it good enough for God to say,

yeah, that's good enough.

I'll come in there and I'll dwell.

You can't do it.

This is why we talk about surrender

and say the Lord didn't call us to do impossible things.

He didn't call us to go conquer worlds

and travel to different planets and do all this stuff

so that we could have access to him.

He called us to do the most simple and basic things.

Like communion is one of my favorite things

because it's so easy.

You simply eat a piece of bread,

you drink juice or wine,

and you just remember what Jesus did for you.

And in that, that is obedience and pleasing to the Lord.

So simple, a kid can do it.

And for us as people,

God did not call us to do these impossible, ridiculous things.

He didn't call you to clean up your life.

He didn't call you to conquer the sin.

He didn't call you to overcome.

He didn't call you to make sure other people get saved.

He said, come and submit to me.

All you have to do is submit.

Open up your life.

Open up your heart.

Allow me to come in.

Allow me to cleanse you.

Allow me to purify you.

Allow me to empower you.

Allow me to call you.

Allow me to use you.

Allow me to do all the things that it talks about in Scripture

that we're just like, how do you do that?

I don't know.

We're not supposed to know.

Let him do it.

We're simply called to surrender.

We cannot house the Holy Spirit within ourselves

by anything that we could ever do other than just say,

Lord, here I am.

Take me and do whatever you want with me.

Inviting him in to your living room is not enough.

Inviting him into your kitchen is not enough.

Having a nice guest bedroom that you keep clean in case someone showed up,

that's not enough.

He's got to have that nasty room in the back where everything gets dumped

and you sweep everything underneath the rug.

He wants every single space of it because it has to be his house.

It has to be his place where he dwells so that he can live in you

and wherever you go, he is there.

And his Holy Spirit is present at your workplace because you're there

and he lives within you.

And your Holy Spirit is present among your family because he's there

and he lives within you.

And everything within you is not something that you're producing.

He's producing the fruit within you.

It's not something that you even have to do or make effort in.

You have joy and all that is happening because God is the one doing it in you

and it is the most unexplainable and it sounds ridiculous thing

that I can possibly stand in front of you today

and I understand many of you are sitting here and it's like, I don't understand this.

And I agree, it's not easily understood.

It doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

But it is what we are called to do.

It's what Scripture calls us to do and teaches us that we surrender to the Lord

and he is the one who does the work.

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness,

and self-control and you know if you've ever had to do any of that

in your own strength around certain people, that's exhausting.

But when God is producing that fruit within you through the power of his Spirit,

that's why you have joy in the midst of it.

No matter the situation, no matter the circumstances,

no matter the person that you are having to endure in the moment,

there's joy because God is putting that forth through your life

through his power in the presence of his Spirit.

The question is, is will you let him come

and will you be the temple for his Spirit to dwell?

Let's pray.

Father God, I just want to say thank you again.

Thank you for the simplicity of just coming in surrendering.

Lord, that is by far the only thing that we have to overcome

is just being able to say, Lord, here I am.

Use me, change me, whatever you want, I'm yours.

That's the difference maker.

Eleven disciples walked with you for three years.

They ministered with you.

They performed miracles when you sent them out.

They did many things that you did and yet they ran away

and they made mistakes and they failed many, many times.

But Lord, the difference maker between them and the gospels

and them in the book of Acts is for ten days they sat in a room

and they prayed and they surrendered themselves

to the power of your Holy Spirit.

And Lord, I pray for every person in this room

that each of us will commit ourselves to just pray

and surrender ourselves to the power of your Holy Spirit.

Wherever you may take us to go,

whatever you may want us to do, that we would be willing to say,

Lord, whatever it is, I'm yours.

And you use me however you see fit.

Lord, we love you. Thank you.

And ask all this in Jesus' name. Amen.